this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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Mildly Interesting

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Computer drive sizes over the years (lemmy.zip)
submitted 3 days ago by ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world
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I just got a new laptop today and when I saw the ssd it blew my mind. Most of my old drives are like the second from left and it's what I think of as a normal drive, buying a standard ssd still feels small to me. But look at that tiny thing to the right! It's the size of a postage stamp!

Assuming I managed to find the right specs (it is a Microscience hh-1050): The monster on the far left is from 1990, holds 40mb, read/write of 0.625mb/s, and weighs almost exactly 2kg. The baby on the far right I got in the mail today, holds 1tb, read/write of 5150mb/s, and weighs about 2.85 grams.

So we're looking at 25,000 times more storage, 8,240 times faster, and 1/700th the weight! And the one on the right is just 1tb, they make one that same model but 2tb. I can barely believe it exists even though I'm literally holding it in my hands.

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[–] frank_exchange_of_views@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Kind of hard to see the scale, but the drive that this removable platter would go into, took the full width of a 19" rack.

It once held several megabytes, but now it's a decoration in my office.

[–] utopiah@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Meanwhile I'm traveling soon and "packing" microSDs, like... 0.5Tos the size and nearly weight of my fingernail. It's ridiculous!

I considered buying the 2To ones ... but I don't even need them. Even the 0.5To ones it's to carry some video library or Kiwix with Wikipedia and StackOverflow which to be honest I don't even truly need as I can get the content over the Internet anyway.

[–] nibbler@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I have some very old RAM at home. You could see the single bits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic-core_memory I have a small viol with some 100 bytes, and one of those fabrics with the rings still on the wires. I threw away the PCB because it was huge...

I just read the article and learned: it was phased out before I was born, and it's the root of the name "core dump" etc :D

[–] nonentity@sh.itjust.works 85 points 3 days ago (3 children)

5MB of storage in 1956.

5MB storage in 1956

[–] the_trash_man@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

You could probably store more in a filing cabinet with paper

[–] Sabin10@lemmy.world 22 points 3 days ago (2 children)

That would hold 1.66 copies of war and peace.

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 21 points 2 days ago (1 children)

ASCII wasn't around then, so it would perhaps be stored in 5-bit ITA2, or 6/7-bit FIELDATA. So likely a 5/8 to 7/8 space savings (unless the numbers are for compressed War and Peace).

[–] WillFord27@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They could've just compressed it using 7zip. Text files compress really small!

/j

[–] tetris11@feddit.uk 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

A space ship descends and lands outside my door, and and a benevolent Alien pops out and hands me a 512 MB USB stick.

"I crafted this for your species, and made sure it's compatible with your hardware standards. It contains the sum total knowledge of all life in the universe and can be used to accelerate your species to the next plane of existence."

I thank him tearfully and he departs with a warm smile, ascending back up into the soon-to-be-knowable cosmos from when he came.

I plug the stick into my machine, and check out the directory. Inside are two files:

 105 MB   knowledge.tar.piidx
 328 KB   README.txt

I open up the readme file to learn more about the PIIDX file format so that I can uncompress the sum total knowledge of all existence. General gist:

  • Uses a compression algorithm with an infinite dictionary based on prime numbers
  • Uses a storage/retrieval algorithm based on the digits of Pi

Realise quickly that the file will never be opened in my lifetime

[–] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 days ago

Once you have one copy on there it would be awfully wasteful to fill the rest up with a 0.66 copy though.

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[–] SolidShake@lemmy.world 101 points 3 days ago (4 children)

And Apple be like. 128gb HDD or upgrade to a 512gb SSD for $600 extra or a 1tb nvme for $1000 extra

[–] warm@kbin.earth 68 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Their customers buy it, so they arent changing that

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[–] nef@slrpnk.net 11 points 2 days ago

To their credit as of 4 years ago all their devices come with high-speed SSDs, the issue is they charge 5x market price for storage and RAM size upgrades.

[–] nullPointer@programming.dev 19 points 3 days ago (1 children)

lack of education is Apple's bread and butter.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago

That’s Windows users, Apple at least has to make it difficult for users to install something else

[–] Decq@lemmy.world 16 points 3 days ago

Apple livea on the notion of 'a fool and his money are soon parted' and can you blame them? They are one of, if not the, most profitable companies around. If it works why change it.

[–] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (4 children)

I've got a full-height 5 1/4" 1GB hard drive around here. Thing is massive.

I've also got most of the storage devices I've ever used over the decades:

  • 5 1/4" floppy
  • 3 1/2" floppy
  • 4mm DAT tape
  • 8mm DAT tape
  • 1/4" QIC tape
  • Zip disk
  • Cassette tape
  • Punched tape

I'm missing the following:

  • DLT tape
  • LTO tape
  • 8" floppy
  • IBM 2315 disk pack

Never used 9-track tapes, punch cards, or removable disk multipacks.

EDIT Don't know how I forgot about cartridges (Atari 400 and 2600 - still got em!) and CDROM/DVD/WORM. I have CDROM, DVDROM (in various formats), but no WORM media (i.e. IBM 3363 - a CDROM in a rigid case, before the official CD standard was created).

[–] myotheraccount@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Funny how optical discs made it onto none of your lists

[–] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 hours ago

Just a brain fart. I've edited my post to reflect them.

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

Magneto-optical. Even better.

[–] umbraroze@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Off the top of my mind, stuff that I've used and still have lying around:

  • 5.25" floppies (DSDD, Commodore 64; I think I may have a few HD floppies for PC but I'm not sure if I have a drive for them)
  • 3.5" floppies (HD and some DD, mostly for PC; I have a few PC carcasses that have floppy drives, but I do also have a working USB floppy drive)
  • Cassette tapes (Spectravideo, Commodore VIC-20, Commodore 64)
  • ROM cartridges (same as above, plus game consoles)
  • Iomega Zip (not sure if the Zip floppies I have have anything relevant; the USB Zip drive is in box somewhere)
  • Iomega Jaz (two disks; not sure if the drive I was actually working last time I used it, could be completely hosed by now, Iomega didn't exactly have a good reputation)
  • A few IDE/PATA hard drives (not sure of the condition)
  • Bunch of CD/DVD/rewritables, I think I have a few unused CD-Rs/DVD-Rs too, never had a Blu-Ray drive for computers
  • USB sticks and hard drives of various descriptions
  • microSD cards used with Raspberry Pi

Funny thing is, I think I have no extra SATA hard drives and modern SSDs lying around, because most of the computers I have that use them are still in operation.

[–] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 hours ago

I didn't consider hard drives (spinning rust or SSD) because they're generally internal/permanent devices. (although I do have a SATA dock sitting on my desk.)

Hmm. It gets more complicated the more I think about it.

[–] Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You need a Jazz drive and a mean looking 20mb MFM hard drive that didn't have auto parking.

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

Syquest cartridges.

[–] ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago

I've actually got a little stack of punch cards. It's a program my dad wrote when he was in college, he gave it to me when I started programming

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 43 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Wait, 1tb?

You're leaving impact on the table, I have plenty of 1tb micro SD cards.

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 43 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Those drives typically have some pretty dreadful read/write speeds (for a computer). Maybe once SD Express is figured out we'll get fast and good Micro SD cards at a high capacity.

[–] CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 16 points 3 days ago (7 children)

And they crap out so quickly. I can't even count the number of SD cards I've had to throw in the trash. I don't think I've ever had a 2.5" or 3.5" drive completely crap out on me (though I have had bad SMART data indicative of a dying drive) and I have been running a media server with dozens of TBs for over a decade now.

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[–] bluesheep@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The left most one is also an HDD? It looks like what I imagine a tape drive would look like but searching for them shows very different results lol

[–] Routhinator@startrek.website 10 points 2 days ago

Its actually a smaller one too. Those 5 1/4 HDDs could be 2 bays tall.

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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And somewhere in there is an NVMe as well.

[–] __dev@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago

The one on the very right is NVMe.

[–] Vinny_93@lemmy.world 22 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Apples and oranges, though. The left two are hard drives, the right two are solid state drives (ie flash memory). They kind of serve the same purpose, but there is quite a big step in between 2 and 3. 2.5" HDDs also exist, though. Then again, so do 1TB MicroSD cards. And 2280 M.2 SSDs. But also huge tapes that are still in use for backup purposes.

[–] atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 21 points 3 days ago (5 children)

There were even smaller hard drives. The iPod used a 1.8in drive.

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[–] Bebopalouie@lemmy.ca 15 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Ahh yes, I remember my first Seagate ST225. A whopping 20 MB of storage for the low low price of 800 bucks.

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